Nick Ferrari

Writer and LBC radio presenter

Cliff shows we need a change in the law, says Nick Ferrari

IT WAS a selfless way to celebrate his 76th birthday but when Gloria Hunniford asked Sir Cliff Richard to attend the Caron Keating Foundation Pinktober fundraising ball 10 days ago, as a long-standing friend Sir Cliff instantly accepted the invitation.

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Sir Cliff was one of the latest celebrities to be subjected to the grossly inhumane witch-hunt that is the increasingly bungled police investigations into allegations of historical sexual abuse.

You will recall the BBC interrupted its schedule to bring breathless coverage of the raid on Sir Cliff’s Berkshire home live to viewers. In one of the darkest days for both the BBC and South Yorkshire police, the two colluded to bring footage shot from a helicopter of detectives rifling through the singer’s home.

Quite what they thought they might find concerning unfounded claims from nearly 40 years ago has never been explained. The BBC’s fervour was possibly fuelled by its near-criminal negligence concerning Jimmy Savile and Stuart Hall.

South Yorkshire police also has the Rotherham sex scandal, Hillsborough and its handling of the Orgreave protest on its hands, so it clearly feels any distraction is to be indulged in and encouraged. Sir Cliff spoke of his ordeal at a meeting at the House of Lords of a campaign group seeking to change the law and provide anonymity for such suspects.

The TV circus took away from me all hope of ever being what I had been before

Sir Cliff Richard

He said he fears he will be “for ever tainted” by the spurious claims.

He went on: “The TV circus took away from me all hope of ever being what I had been before, a confident and respected artist and an ambassador for Great Britain.”

He also said he was grateful that his late sister Donna had lived long enough to hear he had been cleared. Lord Bramall, 92, the former chief of the defence staff, D-Day veteran and one of the most decorated soldiers in the country, was not so fortunate.

His wife went to her grave never knowing her husband was cleared of a battery of claims as lurid as they were unfounded, made by a discredited fantasist, peddled by a disgraced news service and swallowed wholesale by gullible detectives.

Broadcaster Paul Gambaccini attended last week’s meeting alongside Sir Cliff and later revealed he may sue police over his year-long nightmare.

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The iconic singer says he will be 'forever tainted' over the claims

The three innocent men mentioned here are not the only victims. Other broadcasters have had their careers effectively ended after similar claims. As have actors and comedians I won’t name as it merely reinforces the injustice. So how to solve this?

If naming a suspect brings other victims forward and helps secure a conviction, as it did with disgraced BBC Radio 5 Live’s Stuart Hall, it must be encouraged. But these “fishing trips” with high-profile names – which seem to be the legal equivalent of a flypaper designed to see what might stick – have to stop.

The solution is relatively straightforward. The tenet of presumption of innocence can be protected by anon - ymity being guaranteed in all allegations of sex crimes.

However, if the police believe they have a good case and that publicity is highly likely to bring other victims forward, they should then have to put the case to a High Court judge.

If satisfied, that judge – who would be precluded from sitting at any subsequent trial – could then decree the ban on publicity be lifted. Fortunately, all the high-profile personalities innocently caught up so far have been robust enough to get through their nightmares.

Many other people have not been as fortunate and have taken their own lives. What’s “tainted” here is a legal system that permits the naming and unnecessary shaming of the innocent. It has to be addressed.

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The US presidential candidates battling it about in a TV debate

THE three US presidential debates have not been particularly good, mostly bad and last week they got downright ugly. It is fair to assume that any lingering chance that Donald Trump might triumph next month is as shredded as his reputation.

His continual bleating that the whole election is rigged was one thing. His refusal to say whether he would accept the result was the child-like tantrum of a man clearly only used to getting his own way and unable either to listen to others nor work in a collegiate way – qualities that are surely prerequisites for the job of being a president.

A decent Republican candidate could give Hillary Clinton more than a run for her considerable money. As it is, someone with plenty of dubious deeds in her past is looking increasingly a shoo-in to be leader of the most powerful nation on earth.

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NEXT month at their sentencing, a judge will decide whether the youngest couple to be convicted of a double murder in British history can be identified. At the trial the court heard it was a “cold and calculated” attack on a dinner lady and her daughter.

After the murder the couple, then aged 14, took a bath together, had sex, then settled down to watch some vampire movies, eat ice cream and complain about the smell of blood from the bodies of their butchered victims.

Don’t know about you but I’m certain I’d want to know just about everything possible about this evil couple.

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A British solider got caught up in a race row after tweeting a photo of him in camo paint

THE latest organisation caught up in one of these tedious, drummed up “race rows” is the British Army.

A photograph showing one soldier with his face heavily covered in camouflage paint while on training in the jungle in Belize was tweeted with the caption: “Being a #soldier in the jungle requires a robust sense of humour.”

Cue some manufactured outrage that this shows the Army to be racist and the force ordered an about-turn and took the post down. There was nothing racist in the tweet.

It was perhaps more than clumsy but in beating such a retreat it reinforces the suggestion it was initiated for the wrong reasons.

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PA

Eric Johnson murdered his flatmate in 2007

JAMAICAN-BORN killer Eric Johnson has dodged deportation because it has been deemed it would breach his human rights, as he is the illegitimate son of a British man. Johnson, 30, was born in Jamaica to a British father and Jamaican mother, and in 2011 was ordered to be deported.

His legal team argued that amounted to discrimination and last week five judges at the Supreme Court ruled it would be punishing him for “the accident of his birth outside of wedlock”. Any chance we can dump this wretched legislation and hurry up with the British Bill of Rights we were promised years ago?